


you want blood and i promised

by manycoloureddays



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Being Human (UK) Fusion, F/F, Light Dom/sub, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manycoloureddays/pseuds/manycoloureddays
Summary: “Beverly,” Kay says, voice firm and kind, just the same as always. “Beverly, I need you to open your eyes.”She tries, they flutter briefly, eyelashes clumped together by something sticky.“Open your eyes,” Kay says again. Her tone allows for no discussion, no hesitation on Beverly’s behalf.four moments in the many lifetimes of Beverly Marsh and Kay McCall
Relationships: Beverly Marsh/Kay McCall, Kay McCall/Audra Phillips
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	you want blood and i promised

**Author's Note:**

> titles comes from Savior Complex by Phoebe Bridgers
> 
> warnings for: canon typical & vampire typical violence, implied/references to domestic violence, it's very late here so please let me know if i've forgotten anything
> 
> this is set in the universe of my being human smau (which can be found @beinglosersau). you don't need any familiarity with the au, as this fic finishes five years before the au starts, but there are some fun references to it. 
> 
> french translations in the end notes (please forgive my half google/half cousin translations)

**_London, 1854._ **

Beverly’s ears are ringing. The room shifts around her even as she lies still as she can on the floor with her eyes closed. Something wet trickles down her forehead, making its way towards her eye. She tries to reach up to stop it, to brush it away, but her arm won’t move.  _ It’s broken _ , she thinks.  _ He broke it _ , whispers a voice in the back of her head. 

She shuts her eyes. Tries to focus on breathing through the pain. The last thing she remembers. The last thing she remembers is the way the door slammed, sending waves of pain through her head. 

Then she must have lost time. It was light out then, but she’s on the floor in darkness now, shadows stretching across the floor. She should light the lamps. 

There’s a noise out on the stairs. Beverly isn’t sure whether to cry out or continue to lie here, unmoving but for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. If it’s him, back already, it’ll mean he’s found trouble on his way to get more drink in him, and he’ll be looking for more trouble when he gets in. She’s not sure she’ll. No, best not to think like that. If it’s someone else, they might help her. If she calls out. Should she call? 

She lets her eyes slide open. Whatever was trickling down her face gets caught in the corner of her eye. She knows what it is. She knows, but she does not want to. Her head spins. She slams her eyes shut again, groaning. 

“Hello,” a voice calls, just outside the door. “Mrs Rogan?” 

The voice has a softened accent, something melodic and continental. It sounds kind, if a little strained. She tries to answer, but all she can make are quiet wheezing noises. 

“ _ Merde _ .” 

The voice is closer now. Beverly can feel the presence of another body in the room, but the hairs on the back of her neck don’t stand to attention so she isn’t worried. There’s not much more damage her body can take now, anyway. She thinks she might be.  _ No _ . She refuses to think like that, not now that the voice belongs to a body, and the body has a hand that drifts softly over Beverly’s hair, pushing it back from her face. She chooses instead to soak in the comfort.

The voice is familiar. So familiar. Beverly’s almost certain she’s heard it before. She’s so tired. She can’t place it. A woman’s voice, kind but firm, talking to Beverly only, refusing to acknowledge his presence. 

“ _ Je vais le tuer, _ ” the woman says, hard and a little vicious. Then gentler, “what did he do to you?” in a tone that suggests that she not only knows exactly what he did, but that she knows what she will do to him in return. 

Beverly tries to speak again, manages to squeeze out, “Mmm K”. She doesn’t remember from one sharp, rib punctured breath to the next whether she was addressing Madame McCall or attempting to reassure her. 

Her hand keeps gentling Beverly, fingers cool and lovely against the burning hot skin of her forehead, thumb smoothing away the liquid still slowly, slowly making its way from the crown of her head to her chin. 

“Beverly,” Kay says, voice firm and kind, just the same as always. “Beverly, I need you to open your eyes.”

She tries, they flutter briefly, eyelashes clumped together by something sticky. 

“Open your eyes,” Kay says again. Her tone allows for no discussion, no hesitation on Beverly’s behalf. Her body moves quickly to obey. 

At first her vision is hazy, all she can make out are the blue silk of Kay’s skirts and the downward slope of her eyebrows. Kay’s face is all hard lines, this close. They are almost breathing the same air. Her lovely brown eyes have turned cold in anger Beverly knows in her bones is not directed at her. It is an anger currently aimed towards her protection. 

Once she is looking her in the eye, Kay brings the thumb covered in Beverly’s blood up to her lips. She breathes in deeply through her nose, savouring. Still, Beverly cannot make her body react, her mind is hazy. Still, that small voice in the back of her mind whispers,  _ safe, safe, you are safe. She won’t hurt you, not like he did.  _

Kay slips her thumb between her lips and Beverly watches her cheeks hollow as she sucks it clean. What little blood is left in her body rushes to face, she can feel her own cheeks burning with it. 

“Do you understand what I am?” Kay asks. 

_ No _ , Beverly wants to say,  _ I do not understand a single thing about this _ . But Kay’s eyes are solid black and when she speaks Beverly can see just a hint of fangs. It is not possible. It should not be possible. But there are many things on this Earth that cannot be explained by rational thinking. She knows this, holds it in her heart as truth beyond doubt. There are monsters in this world. Beverly knows this better than most. 

It hurts to talk, but she can no longer control her neck enough to nod. “Yes.”

“You have a choice to make. You will die tonight. I am sorry for that, I cannot save your life. But you do not have to stay dead.”

It isn’t even a choice. Not when she can feel the cold sinking into her skin, settling in her bones. 

“Please,” she gasps.  _ Please _ . She offers it up like a prayer. She is out of practice talking to God, has not said a decade of the rosary since she sat by her brother’s grave the day he was buried. The last of her siblings, the last of her family. But she begs now, _ please, even a half life is better. I would give anything for even a half life.  _

Kay smiles, beautiful and awful. A predator. For the first time since she walked through the door Beverly has a moment of true fear. 

Kay leans in close, breath ghosting across the skin of Beverly’s neck. Her skirts rustle, the fabric sounds expensive, so different to the old dress Beverly is wearing. 

“Are you sure?” Lips brush skin for barely a moment, long enough for Beverly to breathe out a final  _ yes _ , before Kay opens her mouth and sinks her teeth into her throat.

Fire rips through Beverly’s body. She feels simultaneously more awake than she has since she first regained consciousness and closer to death than she’s ever been. One of Kay’s hands rests on her neck, her fingers rubbing small circles that barely register through the dual sensation of lips and teeth, suction and searing pain. 

Kay pulls back — just a little, not far enough for Beverly to make out her face. Her breath is hot on Beverly’s cheek. Everything is hot. Beverly’s whole body is on fire, the punctures in her throat throb. Rain beats against the window and the wind howls, but the only sound in the room is a steady, rhythmic panting. Kay moves back in, licks across the wound she’s created, the only one on her body Beverly can feel now.

Then Kay is propping her up, tilting her head forward. “This will be over soon, I promise. You just need to drink and you’ll start to heal.” 

Beverly does not understand until Kay is drawing a thin line across her wrist with a fingernail. Blood starts to bubble up and drip down her forearm. For a brief moment Beverly thinks  _ that will ruin her dress _ . 

But she is pulling Bev closer, and then closer still. And then everything is blood and instinct and Kay. 

She drinks and she drinks and she drinks until her head is spinning. She is no stranger to the coppery salty taste of her own blood. Years of needlework and split lips have made it all too familiar. But this is different. She cannot stop. She wants, she is nothing but a deep, unending thirst. She  _ wants _ and Kay lets her take.

Her own blood boils, she can feel every drop of it as it moves through her body. She has never felt so connected to another person. But she is in Kay now, her blood in Kay’s veins. And Kay is in her. 

_ “Juste un peu plus chérie,”  _ Kay whispers into Beverly’s hair. “Keep drinking.”

She keeps drinking.

She is aware, in an absent sort of way, that Kay is running her fingers through Beverly’s hair and humming a lullaby she is not familiar with, whispering words in a language Beverly does not understand. 

“There now,” Kay says, moving slowly away. “Time to get you up.”

Beverly does not know how much time has passed, but it does not matter. The power in her limbs, the fevered rush she can feel coursing through her, the way every inch of her body yearning to move, to run. It is all miraculous. 

Once she is on her feet, Kay runs her thumb over Beverly’s bottom lip before brushing a soft, sweet kiss against her cheek. 

“There is much you have to learn. There’s someone you should speak to, she will bring you into the fold if that is what you choose. Come with me?” 

It is a question, no matter the confidence of Kay’s stance, the way she smiles, seeming to know already that Beverly will follow. If she were to say no, Kay would allow it. But, Beverly thinks, looking around at the place she has called home, there is nothing to stay here for. She has always preferred moving forward to being left behind. 

“I will.”

  
  
  


**_Saint Lucia, 1903_ **

It isn’t the first time they kiss —t hat was a few days after Bev was reborn —nor is it the first time they sleep together. No matter how many lifetimes Bev lives, she doesn’t think she’ll ever forget it, after a bloodbath in a German alehouse, biting bloody kisses into Kay’s mouth after,  Kay hitching her skirts up so Bev could fit a leg between hers, Bev with three fingers inside Kay while she mouths at her throat . 

This is, however, the first time Bev looks at Kay, mostly naked with the sheets shoved down around their knees, soft edged in the pre dawn light slipping between the slats on the shutters, and thinks  _ oh, I love her.  _

Odd though it may seem, to fall in love with the woman who killed her and saved her in one fell swoop, it is odder still to Bev that it has taken this long. The two of them have spent more time together than many married couples get to spend in their lifetime, although Bev knows first hand that there can be marriages without love, without any kind of respect or tenderness. But they don’t spend every year together. These past weeks are the first she has spent with Kay in nearly a decade. Before Guadalajara they had not seen one another since they had to lie low after Paris, 1894.

They weren't planning on being on Saint Lucia for very long, just a handful of days. A pit stop on the way to pulling more of Kersh’s invisible strings. But the weather had kept them land locked for two extra days. Two days without any more orders, without anyone who knew them. Two whole days with no obligations and a very good reason to stay inside. 

Bev’s eyes catch on the dark bruise on Kay’s collarbone. Two very good reasons to stay inside. 

She reaches out, traces a line from the curve of Kay’s ear down her neck, across her chest, all the way down until her palm fits against the slight swell of Kay’s stomach.

“Go back to sleep,” Kay mumbles, pushing into the touch regardless of her words. 

Bev grins, hiding half of the smile in her pillow. “I don’t think I will.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“I’m awake now, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

Kay chuckles. With her eyes still closed, she shifts onto her side and moves closer until their legs are tangled under the sheets. Bev allows herself a minute to take her in, to look her fill while Kay’s not looking back. 

Her face is so familiar to Bev now. Her body, too. She knows Kay the apex predator, she loves her when she’s hard and fierce, teeth bared and blood dripping down her chin. But this Kay, still drowsy and all the more indulgent for it, is one of Bev’s favourites. Her mouth is the only part of her face not completely relaxed, turned up as it is, in a smirk. Then Kay is leaning in, her nose squashed up against Bev’s, uncomfortable but welcome, until she adjusts, tilts her head, licks her way into Bev’s mouth. Bev lets her eyes fall shut too. 

They kiss for an age, a lazy drawn out press of lips, a slow drag of tongues. She brushes feather light kisses across Kay’s cheekbones, bites playfully at her chin. She’s missed this, missed the way Kay tastes, the way she feels, and she’s happy to revel in it for a while. 

It’s warm and close, the wet heat from outside slips into their bedroom. 

Kay rolls them over, hovers over Bev with a sleepy smile. “Are you suggesting I didn’t wear you out properly last night?” 

She leans in, takes Bev’s earlobe between her teeth and nips at it. Bev reaches up, runs her hands over Kay’s breasts, across her back, pulls her down until they’re pressed together, chest to chest. 

Kay nudges at the side of Bev’s throat with her nose, and Bev stretches out, offering herself freely, giving Kay access to what she wants. To what is hers. Kay sinks her teeth in and it’s like that first night, decades ago now. The rush of power. Feeling wholly connected to Kay. 

She drags her fingernails down Kay’s back. Smooths over the skin as she trails her hands back up. Soft and sleep warm and beloved. Kay runs her hands gently down Bev’s sides, biting down harder on the tendon in Bev’s neck, raising bruises that will fade in an hour, but Bev will memorise them anyway. 

She arches up, on fire and seeking the relief of touch. 

“Mmmm,  _ ma chérie, _ ” Kay breaths into Bev’s skin making her shiver. “What do you want?”

Bev bites her own lip, scrambles around until she finds Kay’s hand so she can drag it down to where she’s wet between her legs. She rocks against Kay’s palm and moans. Kay has always liked her loud. 

Kay moves away from her throat, presses their lips together firmly. Her fingers move against Bev, maddeningly slow, circling and circling but never quite letting a rhythm build long enough for Bev to get what she wants. 

“Please.” Her hips twitch, she tries to grind down on Kay’s hand, but the other woman has always been faster and stronger. She grins a little wicked, holds Bev down on the mattress. 

“Are you sure you want my fingers?” Kay asks, wide awake now there’s a game, a challenge. 

Bev’s hand is still wrapped around Kay’s wrist, and she feels her nails break the skin there. Head thrown back, eyes closed, she feels wild with want. God, she’s missed this. She breathes in deep through her nose. The room smells like the aftermath of rain and them. 

All it takes is a nod, and Kay is moving down her body. She settles between her legs, eyes hungry as she looks at all of Bev laid out before her. Turns her face into Bev’s thigh, and bites and sucks her way up closer, closer, right to where Bev wants her. Kay’s breath is hot against her. 

Bev tangles her fingers in Kay’s hair, but makes sure not to tug or direct. That only ever leads to more time waiting and she needs Kay  _ now.  _

She cries out when Kay stops breathing her in and presses an open mouthed kiss right against her. The flat of her tongue licks a long wet stripe along the length of Bev. She sucks and licks, adds her fingers and rubs, gives Bev all the friction and attention she’s been wanting, everything to push her up, up, up and over the edge, until she’s left panting and clenching around two of Kay’s fingers. 

Breathing heavy, Bev props herself up on her elbows and looks down at her lover. Kay smirks back at her, and not for the first time Bev wonders if this is the moment other people start hearing  _ danger, danger _ in the back of their minds. Bev herself has always run towards Kay. 

“Something tells me that wasn’t quite enough to get you to sleep until midday,” Kay says, and Bev feels lit aflame all over again. Kay crawls up until they’re at eye level again, leaving bite marks in her wake. “My turn, don’t you think?” 

_ I love you,  _ Bev thinks again. She doesn’t say it out loud. She isn’t ready. Instead she grips Kay’s hips tight and flips them over. 

When Kay lands on her back with a bounce she smiles at her like the cat who got the cream. Bev has never been more grateful for a tropical storm. 

  
  


**_California, 1994_ **

_ Four months, two weeks, five days, fourteen hours.  _

She twists the phone cord around her finger and feels simultaneously juvenile and ancient. Gods but she’s fucking tired. 

Kay is still talking in the background, something about Greta, who neither of them have particularly warmed to since she was turned at the end of the 80s, and a run in with some witches. 

“Not the Tremaines?” she asks, when it sounds like Kay is not just pausing for effect, but waiting for a response. 

“No, thank the goddess. Can you imagine? We’re stronger than we’ve been since the war, but we’re no match for a coven that powerful. Even with a little one on each hip, Maggie Tozier could take all of us out on her own. No, just a few hedge witches from up North. But I’m beginning to think she seeks out trouble on purpose.”

Bev hums in agreement. 

“B? What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing much.” Bev watches the wind chimes on her balcony blow about in the breeze. She should make a trip to the butchers today.  _ Four months, two weeks, five days, fourteen hours.  _

“Nothing much? Aren’t you supposed to be out there finding yourself, leaning into your whole broody sesquicentennial moment?”

Bev snorts. “You know that’s never catching on, right?”

“I’ve been alive long enough to know anything can catch on if you try hard enough. Remember when we used to eat men for calling us a ‘choice bit of calico’?” She sighs dreamily down the phone. “Those were the days.”

If Bev closes her eyes she can almost believe they’re in the same room. Bev curled up in an armchair, Kay sprawled on the floor, champagne flutes abandoned in favour of drinking straight from the bottles when they got this far into reminiscing. 

That’s also exactly why Bev’s run away from home, so to speak. Put an ocean and then an entire country between herself and the people that make her feel like eating people is a perfectly good response to catcalling. She’s all in favour for a better response to catcalling than ‘boys will be boys, yes even these grown men who are no longer boys, they will be boys too’, but eating people has started to lose its shine. 

“You ever wonder if there’s more to us than just this?” she asks without meaning to. 

Kay makes a curious sound. It’s the first time Bev’s brought anything up unprompted during the call and she sounds pleased. They broke up almost two years ago now, but Bev thinks there’ll always be some part of her that wants to please Kay, to make her happy, that goes deeper than friendship. Maybe that’s just what happens when you’ve known someone for across multiple centuries. Either way, it’s only Kay who could make her press down on this particular bruise. 

“I just want there to be more to us than, I don’t know, eating people. There’s got to be more, right?”

“You’ve been around for nearly 150 years,  _ chérie,  _ and by my count you’ve done a lot more than just eat people.” There’s an edge to Kay’s voice, one of the reasons Bev has escaped to the other side of the world is their inability to have this conversation without snapping at each other. 

“I get it, we’ve travelled the world, inspired great art, dined in palaces with revolutionaries at the door only to let them in and feed off the carnage. My problem is with the last part. I think,” she takes a deep breath she does not need. But the act steadies her anyway. “I think I’m just tired of death. I want to be able to make my own choices.”

“I tried to give you the best choice I could, but you were bleeding out, Beverly. What was I supposed to do?” Kay rarely full names her. It’s always been endearments,  _ chérie, ma coeur,  _ angel, sweetheart, Bev and recently B. Beverly’s whole name catches in her throat, seems to make her stumble. 

“I know. I know you did. I’m not talking about that, I promise.” They’ve had that conversation so many times now it feels like a play. But she means it, she knows in her marrow that she made the right choice that day. She just has to live with the consequences of everything that’s come since. 

“You already broke ties with Kersh. You left me. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if you decided to leave this hemisphere entirely. What other changes could you possibly make?”

She’s going to laugh at Bev, but there’s nothing to be done about that. 

“I don’t want to hurt people anymore.” Her words feel heavy with implication, but she doesn’t know if Kay will pick it up, know what she means. How long does it take to grow apart when you’ve been woven together this long?

“So what, you’re just going to stop drinking blood?” Apparently she does still know her. “Have you ever seen a vampire who’s stopped drinking blood? It isn’t pretty, B. We’re talking paper thin skin you can basically see through. It’s a pathetic existence. I don’t want that for you.”

Bev groans.  _ She is the most dramatic godsdamn vampire on the planet.  _ “I don’t plan on being pathetic. I’m just planning on sticking to animal blood.”

“Wow. California’s changed you. Is this your version of vegetarian?” Kay snorts, derisive. “You know we’re practically a different species right? Drinking animal blood, drinking human blood, why draw a distinction at all?”

Bev clenches her fists, presses hard enough that her nails bite into the meat of her palm, presses harder and watches the half moons of blood form.  _ Don’t rise to the bait. Don’t rise to the bait.  _

“This is some latent Catholic thing, isn’t it? Repent and redeem?”

She can’t stop herself this time. “Jesus, Kay. Not every fucking thing I do that you disagree with is ‘some latent Catholic thing’.” She even does the air quotes, although the effect is wasted on Kay. “I just want to stop hurting people. I think hurting people is hurting me. And besides, can’t I want to make good choices without there being some dark ulterior motive?”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Bev watches the second hand of the clock glide from the two to the eleven before Kay even draws breath. 

“This isn’t some fucked up redemption tour though, right?” Kay sounds almost gentle, which is just fucking weird. 

Their feelings about vampirism, or at least Bev’s feelings about her own vampirism, have always been so tied up in each other and what they have, in what they are together, that it’s hard for either of them not to read all sorts of things into conversations like this one. It’s a minefield, but Bev doesn’t actually want to blow their entire relationship up. 

“No. I am what I am. I just want to try.”

“Okay.”

Kay drops the subject entirely, goes back to hometown gossip and a very confusing anecdote about a poker game in a Seelie bar that Bev tunes out. She goes back to watching the wind chimes. 

_ Four months, two weeks, five days, fifteen hours since she last killed someone. _

  
  


**_London, 2015_ **

Bev knocks on the front door not at all sure of herself. 

It’s the first time she’s been back in London for more than the time it takes to get her bags at the airport and get out of dodge in ten years. It’s the first time she’ll see Kay in just as long. They call once a month, even video call since that became an option. But she’s really not sure of her welcome at —

The door is opened by a young woman a good head taller than her. She beams at Bev like they’re old friends, even though Bev’s only caught glimpses of her in the background of calls with Kay. 

“Oh Bev, it’s so good to finally meet you,” Audra says, not one skip in her heartbeat. She holds the door open and gestures inside. “Won’t you please come in.”

“Baby, you know that’s not a real thing,” Kay calls out from further inside. 

Audra shrugs at Bev, still smiling. “Yeah, but it’s funny, so I’m going to keep doing it.”

Kay appears in the hall, eyes on her fiancée, face lit up with a smile of her own. She tucks herself neatly into Audra’s side. They look so comfortable together. And then she turns to look at Bev. Bev watches in real time as the corners of her mouth tighten, almost imperceptibly, and Bev realises that she’s just as nervous. Just as unsure of where they stand. She’s always been bold though, so she holds Bev’s gaze and opens her mouth. 

“ _Ma coeur,”_ she says. Just like old times and nothing at all like old times, not with her arm around Audra’s waist and the diamond glittering on her finger. “You came.” 

“It’s your wedding, McCall,” Bev grins, summoning her own bravado. It comes easier than she thought. Maybe they’re fine after all. “You didn’t think I’d miss this, did you?”

Bev thinks there might be tears in Kay’s eyes when she steps forward to hug her. She buries her face in Bev’s throat, her hair spilling over her shoulders, surrounding Bev in the scent of her. Coming home might not be so hard after all.

**Author's Note:**

> translations:   
> Je vais le tuer - I'm going to kill him  
> Juste un peu plus chérie - Just a little more, darling
> 
> i am manycoloureddays on tumblr and bvrlybrks on twitter where you are more than welcome to come and chat, or leave a comment!


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